The Detainee

by Peter Liney

  It was crazy. Lena wasn’t on her way to the Village, she was down in the tunnels. And in any case, she’d never be a party to this. But try as I might, I couldn’t shift the image from my mind.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard the first screams of the night and knew they’d arrived. It was more than I could bear. I jammed my fingers into my ears, closed my eyes, and began humming to myself—some dumb kids’ song from long ago, trying to block out what kids were doing now. I hummed louder and louder, reinforcing it by rocking back and forth, doing anything I could to prevent the sounds from penetrating.

  A bright-orange glow pierced my tightly closed eyes and, when I opened them, I saw a flickering light that soared through the air and landed with a thud on my roof. My lean-to was on fire.

  I rushed out and found myself in the middle of a scene straight out of hell. They were all over. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Screaming out of the fog, torching everything they came across. I mean, Jesus, insanity is so often something we don’t recognize, but I didn’t even recognize this as insanity. Kids dressed in ball gowns, boots and feather boas, thick with makeup, armed with machetes, chopping at everyone and everything they saw, their costumes drenched in blood. Another group decked out in football gear, shirts, shorts, everything, ’cept they wore vivid pink and lime-green wigs and were tossing around a human head as if it was a practice ball. Others were naked from head to toe, every part shaved, their heads, genitals, everything. But they’d painted themselves in something that made them glow, like grotesque and ghostly worms. It was as if they were trying to outdo one another. Not only in dress, but also in brutality.

  Old people were screaming and wailing: cries of terror, death and pleading. Occasionally there was an explosion as someone’s kerosene store went up. It was bedlam. I heard Delilah yelling and looked over to see their lean-to in the full grip of a blaze. She was cursing this gang of kids in a way few had the courage to do, and Jimmy was trying to drag her away. One little punk in a tiger skin shoved her to the ground and then raised his machete. I started to run over but Jimmy threw his bald-headed splay-limbed frame on top of her. I swear they both would’ve been killed then and there, but at that moment an old man who’d been hiding in his burning lean-to came rushing out, his hair and clothing alight, screaming with pain as the kids shrieked with laughter and ran after him into the fog.

  Immediately I helped Jimmy drag Delilah into the shadow of one of the few lean-tos that wasn’t burning. She was obviously in some pain, but still all for giving them a piece of her mind. We dragged her farther out of sight, just as the kid wearing the tiger skin came rushing back out of the fog. He looked around kind of dazedly, like he wasn’t sure if this was the right place or not. Or maybe he was so high he couldn’t even recall why he’d come back. Either way, he knew he was there to kill and, turning to the nearest person, he hacked a woman cowering on the ground across the neck, her head detaching so effortlessly from her body you couldn’t believe life had ever been there.

  People were running this way and that, begging to be spared, doing everything they could to get away. While—and I’d heard but never believed it—others just stood calmly in front of the kids, like trees waiting to be felled. They even offered themselves: kneeling down, placing their bodies in the arc of the machete, the swish of the knife. They wanted to die. They wanted to be put out of their misery. And I saw some obliged, and I saw others just laughed at. As if the kids knew that the cruelest thing of all was to let them live.

  Finally, with the Villagers that were able scattered, and barely a lean-to left standing, they moved on: disappearing into the fog, taking out another row, doing to others what they’d done to us. You could tell which way they were heading merely by the sound of the screams, going farther and farther into the night, like ripples of terror.

  Around about three it stopped altogether and we realized they’d had enough. Lord knows how many they killed, how many lean-tos were destroyed. All I can say is that it was the worst night they’d ever put us through. So much so, I wondered if De Grew and his Wastelords had gotten hold of some new drug, an even bigger thrill, an even surer way of achieving madness.

  The silence they left behind was unlike any I’ve ever known. All of us just standing or sitting around, shivering and shaking, in many cases too stunned to even react to the moans of the wounded.

  I’d lost everything. As had Jimmy and Delilah. The little guy was heartbroken. All his inventions, his little bits of cleverness, his reasons to live and hope, now gone.

  We stayed that way till dawn, and then, with the light somehow charging us with energy, someone started clearing up and others followed suit. But not me. I had something else to do. Something that simply couldn’t wait, and the moment I saw my chance, I slipped away. Down the long row of burned-out lean-tos, out of the Village, and over to the Old City.

  I found her in the living area, sitting motionless on her bed, staring into nothing. I don’t know how, but she knew why I was there. For a long time neither of us could bring ourselves to say a word.

  “Did you used to do that?” I eventually asked, in little more than a whisper. Still she didn’t speak. “Did you?”

  She tried to give this long, sad sigh, but it came out all broken and chopped into little pieces.

  “Tell me!”

  It took a long time. Too long. Finally she nodded through the distance of a quarter of an inch or so, as if it was all she could manage.

  “Jesus!” I groaned.

  “Clancy!” she cried. “What can I say? I can’t believe it now, but then I didn’t know any different.”

  She went quiet again, lengthening a pause into a silence.

  “How could you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know! We thought of it . . . almost as a treat.”

  “A what?”

  “Foggy nights, take drugs, go and terrorize the old people. It was what we did. They encouraged us to do it. Told us we had every right. You weren’t people. It wasn’t wrong.”

  “It is wrong!” I shouted.

  “I know that now!” she shouted, tears coming to her eyes. “But I didn’t know it then! It was just the way it was . . . I can’t explain.”

  For several moments I stood there staring at her. I didn’t understand this any better than what I’d just witnessed in the Village.

  “What we think is so often a matter of circumstance,” she said helplessly. “Like you and your ‘Mr. Meltoni.’ Are you so sure he was such a great guy?”

  “For chrissake!” I protested, angry at the comparison. “He’d never do anything like that—never!”

  She paused in frustration, as if she feared I simply wasn’t capable of understanding. “De Grew and the Wastelords are so good at creating this idea that they’re looking out for you. I mean, when you first arrive they seem so bad, so brutal, but after a while they kind of pull you in. They’re family. Or the only one you got. They feed you, give you shelter, a sense of community, and every now and then encourage you to go crazy. Like you got to do it cuz it’s good for you. Good for everyone.”

  “Jesus!” I moaned.

  “I know!” she cried. “I know! . . . I guess they’re manipulating you, but you don’t know it. You’re too young. You gotta believe in something, and they’re all there is.”

  For a long while neither of us spoke. Blind she might be, but I could tell how acutely aware she was of my stare. I hated the fact that I’d begun to see her as a source of hope, of possible change in my life, and now she was part of the very worst of it.

  A wind got up, sweeping down the tunnel, blowing out the candle. I fumbled for my matches and relit it.

  “Clancy,” came a whisper from behind me.

  I turned around. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, leaning forward, reaching out toward me.

  I just stared at her. What the hell did she want?

  “Please!” she begged.

  It took a while, but I forced myself to take a pace forward, then another,
till I dropped to my knees in front of her. I was that nervous, the only sound you could hear was my breathing. No way could I make the first move. No way. She leaned further forward, put her arms around me and pulled me toward her.

  I can’t describe how that felt. There just aren’t the words. Not in any language. She was so warm and soft, I was so big and clumsy— I was scared I might squeeze too hard and hurt her. ’Cuz I got to tell you, despite what happened in the Village, despite what she just told me, the only thing I could think of in that moment was that no woman had held me like that for almost twenty years. Even then it had been a hooker who I’d paid extra to do it. I stayed where I was, not daring to move, even to breathe, in case it had happened by accident and she might suddenly realize. I mean, it might not have meant much to some, but for me it was nothing short of a miracle.

  Eventually she kind of shifted her body a little, in an awkward way, leaning back and pulling me with her, and I realized what she had in mind. Nothing could’ve shocked me more. My first reaction was to stop her. I even tried. When she started to take off her clothes, I kept saying, “No, no!” over and over, but she wouldn’t listen. She just carried on, removing item after item, till she lay naked beside me.

  I couldn’t look. It wouldn’t have been right. Not with her being blind and all. I just hugged her tighter and tighter, as if to squeeze away our mutual embarrassment. She wasn’t done though, cuz then I felt her fumbling at my belt.

  Again I tried to stop her, even more urgently this time, but she wouldn’t have it. Shushing my protests, ignoring my struggling, pushing and directing me till I was as naked as she was.

  It’s a terrible, terrible thing to say, and, please, God, forgive me, but just at that moment I was almost glad she was blind. I couldn’t bear for her to see that old bag of bones stretched out beside her. Over and over she tried to embrace me but I kept squirming away. I didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t want her to know what I felt like. In the end she forced herself upon me, insisting I let her put her hands wherever she wanted.

  I hated the way her fingers probed deep into my giving flesh. How she kneaded biceps that once wouldn’t have given an eighth of an inch. I wanted to tell her that she should’ve known me when I was in my twenties or thirties, before the parting of the flesh and bone, before the flaps on my back and the creases across my chest appeared, but do you know something? After a while I began to realize that she didn’t care. In fact, I don’t think it even occurred to her. It didn’t matter who I once was, or how I’d once felt, she wanted to make love to the man I was now. And once I realized that, once I got it into my thick head, I don’t know why, and it’s a helluva thing to have to confess, but I started to cry.

  For literally the first time in my adult life, tears rolled down my cheeks. I was that embarrassed, I did everything I could to keep her from knowing, but she felt them fall upon her bare shoulder and hugged me and kissed them away with lips so warm they felt like they were burning off my dulled old skin and exposing something more sensitive underneath.

  And finally we made love. Yes, we did. We made love so beautifully I never even imagined I was capable of such a thing. But don’t ask me about it, cuz I ain’t ever going to tell you. I don’t agree with that sort of thing being talked about. It ain’t respectful. Not to a lady. You’re just going to have to believe me. Down in the dank underground depths of Shit Island, we made love like angels, and come what may, wherever this madness leads us, I tell you, I’ll never forget.

  I stayed with her for another couple of hours, and then, remembering what had happened, that I, along with many others, had to rebuild my lean-to, I told her I had to get back to the Village.

  She walked me up to the entrance and I stood there with her for a few moments, feeling awkward, not sure what had just happened, what it meant. Eventually I gave her a quick clumsy kiss and turned to go, but before I could push the door open, she grabbed me and hugged me for all she was worth. Which made me feel a whole lot better about everything.

  When I got outside I was met by a surprisingly bright and warm day. At any other time I would’ve been really grateful for the first real promise of another season, but as I began to make my way over to the Village, all I could think about was Lena.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Big guys never get the girl!” Didn’t I tell you? It’s a universal understanding, written in nods and grunts. But here I was, walking away from having made love to her.

  Why had she done that? Why? Had I just participated in making love? Or something completely different? . . . Need? Desperation? I mean, when was the last time she had contact with any man? Or maybe—Jesus Christ—maybe she felt it was the least she could do. That it was her way of making up for what the kids had done to us.

  Not for one moment had it occurred to me that anything like that would happen. For chrissake, I could give her thirty years at least. Already I was starting to worry what it might mean, that it would change everything, that I might lose her cuz of it.

  I trudged slowly on across the garbage, anxiety following pleasure as surely as night does day. I guess all I could do was appreciate it for what it was and expect no more. If the next time I saw her she was all cool and flinty with me, just to make certain I hadn’t got the wrong impression, that I wasn’t fooling myself about anything, well, it would hurt, but I’d take it. I mean, no matter what she said or did, she could never take the memory away from me. Nor the fact that I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Arriving back in the Village was a bit like whistling down an alleyway and having someone lay one on you from behind. Reality hit me so hard all the joy so recently in my heart ended up spilled out across the floor. The rows of burned-out lean-tos were a wound, a black scab running through our community. But do you know something? There were those already fixing themselves up with new shelters. Nothing special—in some cases nothing more than freshly found plastic stretched over holes they’d scraped out of the ground—but you still got to admire them.

  Not that everyone was of the same mind. The one thing that’s getting harder and harder to repair is the human spirit. I saw several Villagers in exactly the same places I’d left them that morning. Sitting dazedly on the ground, staring into space, ignoring everything going on around them as if they simply couldn’t do it anymore.

  All the bodies had been dragged away, the chopped flesh, the ruptured sinew, but the stains of blood linger forever. Someone had tried to improve things, splashing a lot of water around, but it just meant that sinister-looking red puddles had formed everywhere; the earth itself looked like it was bleeding.

  Jimmy was still sorting through the remains of his lean-to, digging stuff out, cleaning ash off it, seeing if it was worth keeping. One look was enough to know I was in his bad books.

  “Where you been, Big Guy?” he asked, wincing a little as he straightened up.

  “Oh . . . nowhere,” I said, immediately feeling guilty.

  He looked me up and down. “I thought you’d gone out searching for materials? To rebuild?”

  I shook my head. It’s not often I’m intimidated by Jimmy. Or maybe it was my conscience that was beating up on me. “Sorry,” I eventually muttered.

  He paused for a moment, then sighed, long, white and shaky, and I realized just how upset he was.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he whined. “I lost everything. The lean-to. My stuff. I mean, how can I rebuild? Everyone’s out there looking. What chance do I have with this leg?”

  “Where’s Delilah?”

  “Aw, she’s gone out, but she ain’t as strong as she likes to think she is. No way is she going to be able to fight that lot and bring us back enough to build a new lean-to.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Jimmy. Come on. When she gets back, the three of us’ll go out.”

  He gave this kind of involuntary shudder, a real stunned look about him. “Thanks, Big Guy. I just feel a bit lost, you know.”


  A little later we saw Delilah approaching, slowly picking her way through the line of blackened lean-tos; empty-handed, heavy-limbed, her proud face looking like it was carved from dark, depressed stone.

  I made her rest a bit before going back out. I still had some salted meat from my coat pocket, and the three of us sat there, in the middle of all that charred chaos and weary industry, chewing away in silence.

  It was more torture than anything that the weather was so beautiful. You wanted it to be overcast, dull, expressing affinity, not teasing us with ideas of a better life. But with each passing hour the temperature continued to rise. It was the kind of freakish spell that makes you think the world might be coming to an end, slipping off its axis, heading off in the direction of the sun.

  And the oddest thing about it was, after a while, this seasonal buzz started to go around the Village. As if no matter how dark the circumstances, the optimism of the sun, the promise of spring, is just too big an influence to deny. Again it went through my head how like animals we are as cumbersome mounds of clothing came tottering out into the sunshine, wandering aimlessly around, stretching and shaking out their stiff old bodies like bears coming out of hibernation. Winter’s silence was discarded. People started chatting to each other, calling across the flattened and blackened rows, there was even a little cackling laughter. I mean, you can’t figure it, but that’s how it was.

  Though not for Jimmy, Delilah, and me. We had to get out and find enough stuff for not one, but two lean-tos, and rebuild them both before nightfall. With materials so scarce and competition so great, we’d have to fight for every scrap.

  The first place we tried was the dump out on the Head that everyone else seemed to be ignoring. It didn’t take long to work out why. The corrosives were starting to ooze right on through there, breaking it all down, blending everything from garbage to rock into a putrefying puree, and we quickly moved on.